Shah Rukh Khan urges Bollywood to learn from Hollywood

March 16, 2010

Mumbai, Superstar Shah Rukh Khan Tuesday urged Indian filmmakers “to learn from Hollywood” and offered a three-point prescription which could help the globalization of Bollywood movies.

Speaking at the inaugural session of ‘FICCI FRAMES-2010′, Shah Rukh said that Indian filmmakers must learn screenplay writing techniques, visual effects and discipline in doing movie business from Hollywood.

“However, learning Hollywood screenplay and technology is not about losing the intrinsic quality of our stories. We must maintain our own cinematic individuality,” he said.

Shah Rukh advocated formation of alliances with Hollywood to help the Indian film industry nurture its potentially different story format, the musical-drama format and “make us travel around the world”.

Shah Rukh emphasized that “the sooner Indian filmmakers realize that screenplay is not an art form but a science, the faster Indian movies will globalize and Hollywood can exchange that know-how with India”.

“The big investment we are looking for from Hollywood is the training of mechanics for running machines for visual effects. We need to develop people who can make us our own cheaper, better and faster softwares for filmmaking and have a special branch of trained visual effect teams and talent here,” Shah Rukh added.

Stressing on discipline, Shah Rukh said that the Indian film industry needs to adopt from Hollywood the discipline and organisation with which it does its business.

“This organisation already exists in other Indian businesses, but is woefully lacking in the business of films,” he pointed out.

“This (organisation) also needs to filter down to the film distribution systems based on their models and learn the science of marketing films,” Shah Rukh added.

According to Shah Rukh, the knowledge that Hollywood could bring to Bollywood was a lot more essential than the investments it is already making in India.

“The time has come for having a symbiotic relationship where we can both feed off the knowledge that we have instead of just the movies. The economics will follow. Then, Bollywood and Hollywood together can have a global audience watching our movies,” Shah Rukh said.